The Heist: Chapter 6 - The Crew

by jcoates

A flashback on how the crew came together, and what they want to achieve.

The Crew

They sat across from each other. Nick was swirling his glass of scotch distractedly, trying not to think how elegant the woman opposite him looked. The way she sat - casually, legs crossed, her red dress riding suggestively up just above her knee - it was little wonder that she was attracting not-so-furtive gazes from the majority of the male patrons in the restaurant. Even the other women, many of them wives of the chaps casting clandestine looks at Jay, were glancing at her enviously.

Leaning back in her chair, she exuded a confidence that Nick found almost intimidating. It made him feel like an inexperienced schoolboy sitting down to dinner with a Hollywood starlet. Jay's shimmering hair fell over her shoulders, a cascade of jet-black quartz that contrasted stunningly with her flawless ivory skin in the dim ambient light cast by the pair of flickering candles set upon their table. In the background a piano played, the notes tinkling around them like rain.

Nick dragged his treacherous gaze away from Jay's face long enough to take another mouthful of scotch. The ice cubes clinking against the glass sounded loud in the intimate atmosphere of the restaurant.

Nick glanced at Jay again as he set his glass down. She caught his eye and smiled, and Nick couldn't help but notice how her lipstick matched her dress almost perfectly. He tried to beat his imagination back into line, vigorously attempting to steer clear of the thought of what it would be like to lean over the table and kiss her.

'You're awfully quiet over there,' Jay said, breaking the silence, 'something on your mind, handsome?'

Only you, he thought. I'm planning a heist to steal fifty million pounds worth of jewellery, and all I can think of is you.

'You could say that,' he replied.

She flashed a crooked smile and took a slow sip of her Riesling. Her eyes had captivated him from the moment they had met, beautiful liquid pools of clearest blue. They never left his face as she sipped her drink.

'You want to share?' she asked. She leant forward, picked up her napkin and dabbed daintily at her lips before replacing it and leaning back languidly in her chair, completely at ease. She could have owned the place.

Nick wondered how she could make the fairly innocent and everyday business of holding a glass of wine so bloody sexy.

'Nick?'

'Hm?'

'Jesus, Nick,' she said, smiling again and arching her eyebrows in amused exasperation. 'Tell me what's going on in that head of yours.' She cocked her own head at him, her smile fading, replaced by a look of such profound tenderness that Nick held her eye for only a second before he had to look away. He could tell that she really cared that something was on in his mind, and he wondered at that, wondered why a beautiful and intelligent woman such as her gave a shit what was troubling a professional criminal like him.

Shit, he thought, don't do this to yourself, not again. She's part of the team. It's unprofessional and stupid and you never get involved with the team.

He'd sworn to himself that he wouldn't go through this again. Once had been enough. Naomi had been the single biggest, most beautiful mistake of his life. Three years of happiness so fierce, of a feeling of purpose and contentment so real, he had been able to physically feel it, like a glow deep in his chest that kept him afloat on the unpredictable ocean that was life. She had been his sweetest downfall, and in losing her he had felt as if he had lost the better part of himself.

Nick had thought that they would get married. They had never discussed it, not openly, but with all their hypothetical talks of what they would call their first little girl, (Grace) or boy, (a tie between Dillon and Sam) Nick had believed that he would be with her forever. He had believed that right up until that final phone call.

He'd gone away for a couple of months to France on "business". Nick had told Naomi that he was in banking, a slight bending of the truth perhaps, (at the time he had been robbing them), but not a downright lie, and a bending of the truth that left her free of the title "accessory" had Nick ever been stupid or careless enough to get caught. Naomi had never questioned his fictional banking job, perhaps because she wasn't interested – which would have been understandable in Nick's opinion – or because really she knew exactly what he got up to – which would have been unsurprising to Nick, as she was the sharpest person he knew. Whatever she suspected or believed, Naomi had remained devoted to Nick, sticking to his side through some of the bumpiest patches in his life, including the death of his mother.

Naomi's faithfulness towards Nick had been matched only by his love for her. He had loved her with a completeness that startled even him when he thought about it. It was a love that coursed through his veins as surely as the blood that he would have spilled to keep her from harm. Waking up in the morning and seeing her lying next to him, with her short blonde hair all messed up, filled Nick with the same sort of quiet wonder and reverence that he felt when he watched the sun rise. Every smile of hers had been a gift that he stored away in his heart.

France had been a strain. Two solid months of separation, of constantly thinking of her, of counting down every day until he could leave for home, had certainly taken its toll on Nick's nerves. It surprised him that after three years he could still miss her so much after eight weeks. They kept in contact through the magic of the internet and email, but it was unsatisfying to Nick, who had grown accustomed to seeing the woman he loved most days. Eventually, however, the final day of his stint in France had arrived. The job had been a success and Nick couldn't wait to leave Lyon - and the flabbergasted (and slightly emptier) savings bank that had been the target of his operations – behind him. He had already booked a table at his and Naomi's favourite restaurant, the place that her gentle and cheeky Irish accent had first caught his ear. She had been a waitress then, and the sight of her smiling as she approached his table, with her gorgeous green eyes crinkled at the corners, her short blonde hair tucked behind one ear and small stud pierced through the corner of her bottom lip, had sent Nick's heart racing as not even a gram of Baggo's finest coke could manage. To her astonishment (and delight, she had confessed to him months later) he had asked her out then and there. She had said she would think about it and for him to wait for her to finish her shift for her answer. So he had. Four hours later she emerged from the back pulling on a jacket. She looked surprised, but not displeased, to see him still sitting in the now empty restaurant.

'I thought you would have left,' she said in her soft voice.

'Why?'

'Surely you have better places to be?'

He looked into those sparkling green eyes and gave her a small smile. 'Not anymore I don't.'

Thinking of this and beaming, Nick had clambered into the taxi, leant forward and said to the driver, 'Airport, si'l vous plait.'

It was only when he had arrived at the airport, paid the driver and checked his mobile phone that he got the first twinges of that indescribable yet singular feeling that he later identified as premonition.

Fourteen missed calls?

He'd had his phone on silent-mode and in the voluminous pockets of his cashmere winter coat he had not felt it go off in the taxi.

Nick touched the screen and accessed his list of received calls. All of them, bar two from the same unidentified number, were from Nick's father.

What does the old man want with me all of a sudden? Nick thought.

Before he could even touch his father's name to call him back, Nick's phone started vibrating in his hand. He touched the answer key that was illuminated on the screen.

'Dad?'

'Nick… son, I'm so sorry to call you like this. There's been an accident.'

The conversation that followed was one that Nick still struggled to recall. Words, all interconnected, yet so hideously extreme and serious and heavy, that at the time they failed to make sense, were unbelievable, as they tore their way through his soul.

'Naomi… on her way to the airport… slick road… flipped… I'm so sorry… ambulance… she's gone, Nick… she's gone… gone, son.'

That was when Nick swore that he had looked down upon himself in a genuine and profound out of body experience. One so lucid, that it was the only way in which he remembered the following moments. He watched himself as his phone fell from his suddenly wooden, nerveless fingers. It seemed to take an age for it to hit the ground, the screen cracking into a plastic spider-web as it hit the concrete. It seemed to Nick as if he had had his breath ripped from his body, although when he tried to remember back, Nick vaguely recalled breathing out so hard and violently that he almost started coughing. He had observed himself, as his legs buckled; his body limp as he fell, for what seemed like days, to his knees. His arms flopped uselessly at his side, numb. He could remember exactly how his eyes had flickered slowly from side to side and his head turned as if he was searching for something. He wondered later if it had been meaning, perhaps. He could visualise perfectly how his chest had rose and fell as the scream had built in his chest, stifling him, crushing the life out of him, as his heart froze in mid-beat.

Never in Nick's wildest nightmares had he thought himself capable of screaming like he had then. It was the sound of unbridled, all consuming grief. It was the sound of total despair, despair at the world, despair at Fate – whatever that was, despair over being robbed of one so cherished that you would gladly place yourself in their stead.

Eventually, his scream of anguish died into a low animal moan. Nick was certain that his consciousness had floated over himself, as he watched himself rock forward, his forehead touching the pavement, his arms clutched to his chest. He gazed on as the man on the pavement, himself, groaned again and began to cry, hot tears streaming down his face. His eyes were still open, staring into God-knows-what, his mouth agape, a thin string of saliva hanging from his lips to the ground.

What had happened after that phone call was blurry to say the least. Nick knew that after what seemed like hours of hopeless blackness, clawing desperately at the pavement, two members of airport security had arrived. They had heaved Nick to his feet where he had stood swaying on legs that seemed to have lost all feeling. He had stopped sobbing, although uncontrollable tears still leaked sporadically from his eyes. The security guards had taken him to a quiet room, sat him in a chair, white and stiff, and left him with a cup of strong French coffee.

Due to the fact that he hadn't wanted to be stuck in that room for any longer than was necessary, Nick had managed to communicate to the security team that he hadn't lost his fucking marbles as they all seemed to fear. However, when it came to explaining what had happened outside the entrance to the terminal his mind went blank, as if it was trying to deny what had happened. Fighting the rising lump of panic and fear that was growing in his throat, Nick somehow got across to the French guards that he had lost his wife. After that, judging by the commiserating nods and muttered condolences, he thought that they had got the jist of it.

Nick didn't go home. He had stayed in France. And he had drunk. A lot.

Looking back Nick had realised just how pathetic he had been. He had also learned that no matter how shit-faced he got, no matter how many times he drank himself into a blessed unconscious oblivion, he always woke up feeling as if someone had ripped out his insides, leaving him empty, with only his memories for company and a huge gaping hole where Naomi had been.

Heartbreak? Nick didn't know about that. Nick associated the word "heartbreak" with connotations of sharp pain, a feeling of having one's heart shattered like a crystal ornament, leaving jagged shards of memory behind, but for the five weeks immediately proceeding Naomi's death he had felt absolutely numb. His stomach ached constantly; the air in his lungs seemed heavy and weighed in his chest, and his heart felt dead, an oppressive lump that felt nothing. The initial pain of losing Naomi had been slowly replaced by a hopeless, hollow acceptance, which was both a relief, and a burden.

Whilst he was drinking - something that encompassed the majority of his time during that first month after Naomi had gone – he often entertained the notion of what it would be like to be with another woman. The very thought repulsed him at first. To think of being so intimate with anyone other than his lost love revolted him, and when he got onto that tangent of thought, reliving moments such as when he and Naomi first slept together, he would end up on the floor of his hotel room, rotten drunk and howling.

After five weeks though, his pain and anguish turned to bitter resentment. Resentment at a world that had, inexplicably, fucked him over, resentment at a God that he had never set much store in and now wished existed so that he could hate Him and blame Him. Blinded by a rage that he could aim at no one and nothing, Nick sought solace in the arms of countless nameless women.

Nick reasoned that the more strangers he slept with, the more sexual encounters he immersed himself in, the more likely it was that he could drown his memories of the woman whose passing had caused him so much hurt. Reasoning under the influence of a bottle and a half of vodka is seldom reasoning at all.

With each new woman that he went to bed with, the more his bitterness grew. He came to resent the sex itself, then the women and then, finally, himself. Nick would lose himself during the sex, caught up in the heat and passion, his anger and emotional pain smothered by the immediate urge of his body for satisfaction. After the deed was done, as he listened to the nameless female figure sleeping next to him, all his hurt and frustration would come flooding back, black and hot, through his veins. He would toss and turn unable to sleep because, no matter how beautiful the girl lying next to him was, she wasn't Naomi.

Since then Nick had healed, thanks mainly to his friends and father, who had put up with his depression and dark moods with a patience that, in hindsight, Nick had found incredible and rather humbling. He had a sneaking suspicion that, if it had been Baggo in his position, and acted how Nick had acted, he would have found it hard to put up with his surliness and blatant non-caring approach to life in general. Nick still carried the scars, but they were hidden deep down, buried in a place where, if he chose, he could examine the tender memories of the only woman that he had ever loved.

Now, Nick found himself sharing a table with Jay, and he had to wonder how the hell he had got himself into this position.

It had been Baggo, of all people, that had introduced Nick to Jay. It had been when the two of them had first decided to set up their joint operations. The two men had been friends for years, setting up their own London-based business after Nick had returned from France. Baggo had been a member of the team that Nick had helped rip off the auction house in Lyon. The two of them had been bought in by a Dutch bloke to help him with the job in France, art heists being a speciality of sorts for him. Being fellow Englishmen, Nick and Baggo had bonded to a degree, and Nick had found an unexpected source to vent his frustrations and feelings about being away from Naomi in the friendly and open Tom Baggery.

Once the two men had reunited back in London they had set about starting their own company of thieves. They had acquired the expertise of the Driver by chance. The huge man had been driving the taxi that Nick and Baggo had caught after a planning session at a local bar. There had not been so much planning as their had been sinking of alcoholic vessels on this particular occasion however, and the pair had decided to call it an early night after Baggo inadvertently started flirting outrageously with a rather pretty woman who had turned out – after (what Nick could only imagine to have been) a vigorous closer inspection by Baggo in the bar's toilet facilities – to be a rather pretty man. The two had made their wobbly way to the nearest taxi stand and hopped into the back of a waiting cab. They had immediately launched loudly back into the topic of needing a getaway driver for their proposed crew. Their driver had turned in his seat then, and addressed them.

''Scuse me, gents,' he had said in a deceptively posh voice, 'but I believe I may be able to facilitate you in your predicament.'

'Come again, mate,' Nick replied, leaning forward, suppressing a belch.

'I couldn't help but overhear you two back there. You're planning some sort of job, a job of dubious legality perhaps. You were saying you needed a man who was skilled behind the wheel, is that correct?'

'What the fuck where you listening in for, aye?' Baggo slurred.

'Forgive me, but it was hard not to hear. The two of you are practically shouting.'

Nick laughed. 'So what if we are, mate? You want to join up, is that it? You'll need to be able to handle something with a bit more balls than this piece of shit.' He rapped his knuckles against his window.

'It's not what you drive, sir, but how you drive,' came the even reply from the huge man in the front.

'Alright, let's see what you've fucking got then, big boy,' Nick said. He thought the well-spoken cabby was pulling their legs, taking the piss out of a couple of blokes who had had a few to many.

Twenty-five minutes later, after putting his modest Ford Mondeo through a series of manoeuvres that left Baggo vomiting spectacularly on his hands and knees on the side of the road, Nick had decided that he liked the quiet giant taxi driver.

'Give me a call tomorrow,' he had told the man, handing him a business card with only his name and number on. 'I should remember that I met you.' Nick glanced over at Baggo who was still regurgitating a large percentage of the beers he had had during the night with some energy. 'That stupid bastard certainly will.'

The cab-driver had called the very next morning, and they had arranged a breakfast meeting. Nick had arrived slightly late and dishevelled, ordered a cup of earl grey and sat heavily down opposite the big man who was wearing a pork-pie hat and brown leather jacket. Nick had confessed that he hadn't taken the giant, soft-spoken chap to be criminally inclined. The bloke opposite merely told him that taxi life was dull, that he knew the streets of London like only a cab-driver could, and that he wanted to be free.

'Free?' Nick had asked, unsure of the chap's meaning. 'From driving a cab?' He took a swig of tea.

'Not just that, Nick. I want unadulterated freedom,' the man had replied, as he pulled out his wallet. 'I want freedom to do what I want when I want. Back in the days gone by, a man could take off into the world with only the clothes on his back to seek his fortune in some far flung corner of the world.'

Nick stared at him as he pulled out a twenty pound note and looked at it thoughtfully, privately thinking that he might have just agreed to trust a one hundred and thirty kilogram man who was nuttier than squirrel shit.

The mammoth bloke placed the twenty carefully on the table. 'I'm a romantic, Nick, but I'm also a realist. Life's not as simple now as it was then. Everybody wants to be free, but now freedom comes with a new title; wealth. If you have wealth then you're free, free to go wherever you wish to go and do whatever you want to do. Someone once said that money makes the world go round. I don't like to believe this is the case – call me optimistic. I like to think that, as much as the human race has raped and plundered this rock of ours out of greed and ignorance, that an inherent goodness drives most of us. You might think that's a load of rubbish, but I like to think that that goodness is what makes the world go round. However, I won't deny that money acts as the lubricant, making it spin just that little bit more smoothly.'

'For some at least,' Nick replied.

'Exactly,' said the cabby, winking.

'You've proved to be quite enlightening, you know that?' Nick said after another gulp of tea.

'That's the thing you'll learn about me, Nick,' the big man said, tipping his hat, 'I like to save my talking for when it counts.'

He fished in his pocket and extracted a pen, which looked tiny in his meaty hand. He scribbled on it for a second and then slid it over to Nick.

'My number. Ready when you are, chief.'

And with that he exited the café, taking his hat off and holding the door open for an elderly woman who was entering as he went.

Nick finished his cuppa in silence. When he was done he picked up the serviette and pulled out his phone to store the number. Then he realised that he hadn't even asked the cabby his name. He glanced down at the napkin again and saw a name – or title, written in a neat hand and underlined, above it.

The Driver.

Bar that first meeting, Nick had heard the Driver speak only a handful of times.

It was after the three men had pulled a few jobs together that Nick first met Jay. They had just knocked over the house of an earl – or maybe a lord, Nick couldn't recall – and stolen an antique dining table and chairs combination from his manor house, after seeing them advertised in the catalogue of a local auction house. Being new to running his own bunch of miscreants, Nick had no idea what the hell he was going to do with a dining room table and chairs from the fucking Victorian times or whenever it was made. Surprisingly, Baggo did.

'We'll take it to Jay,' he had told Nick. 'She'll know how to shift the bloody ridiculous thing.'

'And who is Jay when she's at home?'

'This bird I met back when I was working for this guy in Dublin. Old shit was a speciality of his and –'

'By old shit, I expect you mean antiques?' Nick interrupted.

'Antiques,' Baggo agreed, dipping his head. 'So anyway, he always needed to shift this old – antique I should say – shit. He knew this girl here in London, some what of an expert when it came to appraising these sort of items, but even better at getting rid of the gear itself.'

Nick had been quietly amazed that Baggo had been able to step up and volunteer a contact that could prove invaluable in moving stolen goods.

'So, what's she like then?' he had queried. 'Trustworthy? She doesn't mind playing fence?'

'She's a pretty girl,' Baggo said, giving Nick a sly sideways glance that managed to be about as furtive and sneaky as a slap on the arse.

Nick wasn't having a bar of it. 'What's she like, Baggo, professionally.'

'Well, this bloke I was working for, he looked like a university professor or something, so getting this girl Jay to believe that he was a professor wasn't so hard.'

'So she had no idea that any of the items that you were bringing her were nicked?'

Baggo shook his head.

'So we can trust her, you think?'

'She's good at her job, Nick, and she made a healthy little commission from our business.' Baggo had patted him on the back then. 'And I'm serious; she's not bad to look at.'

Nick rolled his eyes.

'She's Swedish… or Danish… or Finnish maybe,' Baggo added blithely.

'Wow, Baggo, you're really selling her to me, you know.'

Admittedly, Baggo hadn't been wrong, apart from the Swedish or Danish or Finnish guess (Jay was Norwegian), because the woman that Baggo introduced him to the following day was, in a word, stunning.

'Good morning, gentlemen,' the woman had said, putting down the invoice she had been looking at.

Nick was still taking in the little shop. There were a few items spread around the place, a chaise-lounge, a couple of matching bookcases, a display cabinet containing an assortment of china plates and jugs that were, to Nick's eye, absolutely hideous, but probably cost a small fortune. There were a smattering of other antiques but all in all the shop was relatively clutter free, airy and bright.

'Lovely to see you again, Miss Valen, how are things?' Baggo asked with an air of politeness that Nick was rarely used to hearing.

Jay Valen laughed. It was a clear, beautiful sound that made Nick look up from the end-table he was examining, almost involuntarily. It reminded him of waking up early after a day and night of foul weather, and knowing that when he drew back the curtains the sun would be shining and the sky would be blazing blue and that the day ahead was sure to be a good one, if not one of the best.

'Things are excellent thank you, Mr Baggery,' she replied, 'and I hope everything is well with you? I must say that it's been a while since you've come to visit.' She pouted then, and smiled. 'Things have been awfully dull without you.'

Baggo blushed. 'Call me Baggo, please! Mr Baggery is so fucking formal.'

The lady laughed again. It was so sincere that Nick couldn't help but smile.

'Fair enough,' she turned to Nick, who was hit by and pinned under the unwavering, confident gaze of her startling blue eyes. 'Is this a friend of yours?' she asked, her voice like honey.

'A very good friend,' Baggo said, 'goes by the name of Nick. Nick this is Jay Valen.

Jay stood, straightening her blouse and extending her hand. 'It's lovely to meet you, Nick.'

'Likewise,' Nick said, moving forward and taking her proffered hand and shaking it. Her perfume was faint and sweet, like flowers on a warm summer night.

Jay sat back down and switched her attention back to Baggo. Nick's eyes lingered on her for a couple of seconds more before he too turned back to his partner.

'So, Baggo,' Jay said, 'to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit this morning?' She spoke with all the poise and grace of a girl with a private school background. Someone used to speaking to adults like an adult, a child who was grown up by the time she was thirteen. Her accent and perfect enunciation was upper class English - a sign, perhaps, of a wealthy, well to do family upbringing – yet she still retained an underlying Scandinavian lilt, so that every now and again she rolled her 'ers', giving her speech an inflection that was close to a purr. Nick was a sucker for a pretty voice, and he found himself almost hypnotised by Jay's soft words.

'I assume that you are here for business related purposes?' Jay continued, crossing her legs and leaning back in her seat.

'Well, I sure haven't acquired the testicular fortitude to ask you out yet that's for sure,' Baggo replied with a grin.

Jay laughed her heavenly laugh. 'Well what can I do for you in the mean time then?'

Nick stepped forward. 'It's actually me that requires your assistance.'

Jay arched an eyebrow. 'Do you indeed? What sort of assistance can I provide for you, Nick?'

Why did his name sound so much more exotic and exciting when it came off her tongue?

'Uh,' he managed, blinking and giving himself a little mental shake.

God, you must look like a moron, he thought. What's wrong with you? You've seen attractive women before. Pull yourself together and stop acting like a plonker.

'Sorry,' he said, smiling, 'I came in because I heard that you were the person to see when it came to finding buyers for antiques and other valuables.'

The woman opposite him nodded. 'Please, have a seat.'

'Thank you.' Nick settled himself in the chair across from her.

'What exactly are looking to sell?' she asked.

'Well,' Nick said, launching into a fictional story he had thought up on the drive over, 'my grandmother recently did us all a favour and died a few weeks ago.'

'Oh, I'm sorry,' Jay said, looking a bit confused at Nick's tone.

'Don't be,' he told her, waving a hand, 'she was a hideous, cantankerous old goat. I would have killed her myself if it hadn't of meant going within five hundred meters of her.'

Jay gave a small disbelieving laugh and covered her mouth with her hand. 'What a lovely grandson you must have been!'

Nick grinned back. 'You have no idea,' he said. 'Anyway, I personally think she must have lost the plot slightly before the end, because the crabby old dear went and left me and my brother half her estate each.'

'Lucky you,' Jay said. Nick was pleased to see that she was still smiling.

'I'll say,' he agreed, 'it's almost enough to forgive the decrepit old bat for a childhood free of birthday presents and Christmas cheer. You know, all I ever wanted was an air-rifle from her to use on the rabbits at her place, and she never ever stepped up for the team.'

'Dear me, it sounds like you were deprived,' Jay mocked gently.

'I know! I absolutely agree! I had a feeling you'd be a sympathetic ear.'

Jay leaned forward conspiratorially, 'I thought I was the only one to have suffered at the hands of a fabulously wealthy yet vindictive grandmother. It makes me so happy to think that I have a kindred spirit in this dark world where grandparents deny their grandchildren air-rifles.'

'I'm sensing some sarcasm there,' Nick said, his eyes narrowing in fake suspicion. 'I've only known you five minutes and you're already teasing me about my traumatic childhood.'

'I wouldn't tease you, Nick,' Jay said. She gave Nick a mischievous grin.

'And I had such high hopes for this friendship.'

'Well, you'll just have to redeem yourself won't you?'

'What do I have to make up for exactly, Miss Valen?'

'My first impression of you is far from flattering, Nick,' she looked concerned but Nick could see a cheeky glimmer in those deep blue eyes. 'I've got you down as a maudlin, self-obsessed chap who harbours no ill feelings towards the death of his grandmother. On the contrary your only regret is that you didn't get to knock the old dear over yourself. Add to this the whinging over the dangerous Christmas present that was never delivered by the previously mentioned despised grandparent, and I must conclude, sir, that you are none other than a pussy.'

Nick sat back, unable to think of a witty or charming retort. He half-smiled.

'And if that first impression is not worth rescinding, especially when that impression has been lodged with an almost complete stranger of the opposite sex, then what kind of first impression is.'

Nick closed his mouth and then opened it again.

'Well, fuck me; you've got my number haven't you?'

Jay's face broke into another smile. 'Don't worry; you'll have plenty of time to make it up to me.'

Without missing a beat Nick replied, 'It's a relief that you should say that Jay because you have no idea how hard it is to find an antiques dealer as cheeky as you.'

A look - hers eyes held in his for a fraction of a second longer than was usual between two near strangers, bordering on lingering perhaps – passed between them.

Her gaze flickered to the knot on his necktie, almost hesitantly.

'And what was it that your grandma did, Nick?' Baggo prompted, moving over from where he was looking uninterestedly at a collection of ancient looking telescopes.

Nick snatched up the hint smoothly, the moment pushed to the back of his brain for later, closer analysis – what had that been?

'So, grandma, dear, sweet woman that she was, has left me half of the possessions that so nauseatingly remind me of her. I'd normally just throw them out, but as granny was so bloody rich, and was so excellent at being a tight-arse when it came to air-rifles and the like, I can only assume that she bought herself either a disgusting amount of air-rifles or a lot of other really nice stuff.'

'So you'd like me to take a look at those items?'

'Yes, please.'

'Would you like me to travel out and look at them, rather than bring them in? If there's as many items as there sounds at your grandmother's house, it might be easier me coming to you, rather than you having to transport them here.'

'No that's fine,' Nick lied, 'we still need to sort out who gets what between my brother and me.'

'Don't squabble,' Jay said, tucking a black lock behind her ear.

'I'll try my best,' he said after a second.

'Good,' she approved.

Nick glanced to his side. 'Shall I call in before I bring something in?' he asked. 'Or is it normally this slow?'

Jay smiled - a genuine good natured smile – and got to her feet. 'Nick, where you see slow business, I see a business that is booming. You have to be careful with interpretations.'

'Sorry,' Nick said, holding up his hands defensively, 'but if business was booming, wouldn't there be more of an abundance of old stuff around here?'

'Nick, you misunderstand my capability as a saleswoman,' Jay said. She perched herself on the corner of her desk, crossing her legs. It wasn't an obvious, vulgar display of sexual assertiveness. It was more a sign of dominance, of confidence. I am smart and attractive. This is my shop and I run the show. Don't presume to know my business, and yes, I do in fact realise that you are probably mentally undressing me right now. No, I'm not offended, in fact I'm pleased. Distracted men are so much easier to manipulate and intimidate.

Nick went for the unimpressed, innocent approach, as vainly he tried to fight the vision of her in red lingerie that was clouding his thoughts, frenziedly ignoring all neurological impulses to disperse.

'So, I'm confusing your prowess as a dealer with a lack of business? How rude of me, I apologise.'

'Interpretations, Nick, be careful with them,' she said again, smiling and holding out a hand.

Nick shook it again. Hands never actually felt slender, that was just a bit of poetic bollocks, but he would have to say - not of his own accord, but if someone asked him - if he had to use a word to describe Jay Valen's hand he would probably lean towards…

'Ring me, before you want me to take a look at anything, just in case it's busy, of course.' She said as a parting shot, a crooked smile on her perfect lips.

'Thanks for your time,' said Nick as he got to his feet. 'It was nice to meet you.'

He turned, straightened his jacket and left, calling Baggo away from a picture he was looking blankly at.

'We off are we?' he asked chirpily.

'We are.'

'Thank Christ, I almost turned into an antique just waiting for you to finish.' He turned round and added, 'A pleasure to see you as usual, Miss Valen,' giving her a wink.

'Mr. Baggery,' she said with a smile and incline of the head.

Nick couldn't help but look back.